Friends savor Good Friday tradition

It's the tradition of baking an Easter pie, and it's a piece of
cultural heritage best shared among good friends during the
preparations each Good Friday, and then among families around a
mid-day table on Vigil Saturday, the day before Easter.

The friends get together each Good Friday in the basement
kitchen - another Italian tradition - of Frances Cattano Mantone on
Woodland Road, from about 8 a.m. to noon. They prepare their pies
together, but then take them home to bake.

Mantone said she and some of the others remember Easter pies
well from their childhoods, and they decided it was a practice that
needed to be revived.

"I think tradition is important," said the longtime Madison
resident, a former Borough Council member who now serves as
chairwoman of the Planning Board.

The friends gathered this past Good Friday at Mantone's home
included Diana Taranto Krug, Joan Busacco Graziano, Carmela
Tarantino Siegrist, Marie Zincone Toto, and Mantone's
daughter-in-law, Bridget Costa Mantone. Another traditional member
of the group, Angela Cetta Strelkoff, was ill on Good Friday and
couldn't join them.

The Easter pie is a hearty concoction - befitting its historical
purpose, to break the fast of Lent, the 40 weekdays of fasting and
penitence from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Accordingly, meats are a
featured ingredient. Various pies prepared Friday included
prosciutto and salami, as well as eggs, ricotta, basket cheese and
mozzarella. No two pies were the same.

After the preparations, each woman took her pie home to bake.
The fragrant pies remained off-limits to their families, however,
until the following day - when the church bells rang at noon on
Vigil Saturday, signaling the end of Lent.

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